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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27547123">BIGTOP BURGER: TUESDAY</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikawritesthings/pseuds/mikawritesthings'>mikawritesthings</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>BIGTOP BURGER (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bastardization, Bitter Exes, Crack, Gen, Kidfic, M/M, One-off, POV Second Person, Scary Clowns, Transformation, Zombies, by which i mean an attempt to write dialogue for a young child, this is not going to go where you think it's going to go, this might actually be the worst idea i've ever had</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:40:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,376</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27547123</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikawritesthings/pseuds/mikawritesthings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Bigtop Burger gang takes the day off.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tim/Doctor (BIGTOP BURGER) (implied)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>BIGTOP BURGER: TUESDAY</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>In the Talking Heads' infamous hit "Once In A Lifetime," David Byrne has a line that goes something like this:<br/>"And you may say to yourself/ My God! What have I done?"</p><p>As much as the Talking Heads get meme'd on, that line has always kind of stuck out to me. It feels like it's referring to something specific, something that must only be inferred from the remainder of the song's lyrics. I just never fully understood what exactly it meant.</p><p>Now, though? Now that I have written this? I understand completely.</p><p>My God! What have I done?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Penny</b>
</p><p>“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Penny singsongs as her kid wanders into the kitchen. For the approximate two thousandth time, she internally thanks whatever deities are up there that she was already a morning person <em> before </em>she decided to have a child. Kids, especially hers, seem to have the sleep schedules of your average songbird.</p><p>
  <em> Or your average clown. </em>
</p><p>That, combined with her current workplace’s attention to the brunch rush, would be enough to slaughter most night owls. Penny silently wonders how Billie (who she’s only seen fully wake up around 1 PM) manages it. Of course, Billie is--</p><p>“‘Morning, Mommy,” utters the pajama-clad child climbing into her seat at the table. “Can I have oatmeal for breakfast?”</p><p>That’s new.</p><p>Penny looks up from her intense focus on the teapot. “I thought you didn’t like oatmeal.”</p><p>Her kid scoffs. “Yeah, but that’s when I was six. I’m <em> seven </em>now. I gotta try new ess-- ecks-- assperiences.”</p><p>“Experiences.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>Penny eyes the pot of oatmeal currently chugging away on the stove. It takes a few seconds of mental calculation to plan on how to make a pot of carbohydrate glue appealing to a seven-year-old’s palate. She turns to her kid and gives them a Toon-perfect thumbs-up. “New experiences ahoy!”</p><p>All the oatmeal-serving entails is ladling some into a second bowl, but Penny goes out of her way to be especially theatrical about it. She practically dances around the pot, sprinkling in a dash of cinnamon and brown sugar like that one rat from <em> Ratatouille. </em>Breakfast is served with a theatrical bow, and Penny’s kid applauds with tiny-handed gusto.</p><p>They actually look at the oatmeal, and are almost crestfallen at its distinctly non-candy color until they notice--</p><p>“Sprinkles!” they gasp. Surely enough, both servings of oats are topped with tiny rainbow-colored flecks. Penny has a very small double take. <em> Since when do we have sprinkles in the house? </em></p><p>“Yes, sprinkles!” Penny says aloud, summoning her maternal façade of control. “The sprinkles--” she sits down to actually eat, “--are just for show.”</p><p>The tiny human digs into their oatmeal like a ginger-haired hyena. Penny eats along with them.</p><p>“Hey, Mommy?” the kid asks, stopping mid-spoonful like they just remembered something.</p><p>“Yes, pumpkin?”</p><p>“Are clowns real?”</p><p>
  <b>Billie</b>
</p><p>Billie wakes up by rolling out of bed. Literally. She reaches for her bedside table when her 6:30 alarm blares, misses the snooze button by about half a mile, and instead ends up face-first on the floor. She has an internal half-heart-attack when she realizes there’s class, then a different kind of half-heart-attack when she remembers that she graduated this spring and it’s actually <em> work, </em>then relaxes when she remembers today’s her day off.</p><p>“I still don’t get why we have <em> Tuesdays </em> off specifically,” Billie mutters to herself as she emerges from the floor.</p><p>Then she stops as something clicks in her mind. It’s like a little “!” appears over her head for a second. When she picked herself up off the floor…</p><p>Billie lies back down on the floor, then shoots back upward to test her results. There it is again. And <em> again, </em>for a third time, just to be sure.</p><p>Somehow, like some kind of Toon, she’s making a squeaky toy noise.</p><p>Billie drags herself to the pill tray on her side table, swallows <em> all </em>her meds (as she makes a mental note to Google whether hearing and/or emitting squeaky toy noises is a withdrawal symptom for any of them), and washes them down with a gulp of water. Bleary-eyed, she stares at her reflection in the nearby mirror.</p><p>Those dark circles under her eyes have been awfully <em> blue </em>lately.</p><p>Now she’s fully awake. She gently paps herself on the temples a few times, shakes her head, rubs her eyes, and looks at herself again. Yep, they’re still there: two perfect blue semicircles under her eyes, with rhombus shapes dripping downward from them like cartoon tears. The exact same pattern as the greasepaint she wears at work.</p><p>Billie takes off for the bathroom, digging under all her disorganized makeup supplies until she finds a bottle of the most <em> potent </em>makeup remover she owns: the type goths use when they start to regret the “two-day-old eyeliner” look. She attacks the greasepaint with a dollop of the stuff and a washcloth--</p><p>And finds it quickly removed.</p><p>“Oh,” Billie says with a shrug. “Guess I overreacted.” She scratches her head. “What was I even... worried about…”</p><p>Somewhere in the back of her internal monologue, there is a very evil giggle.</p><p>
  <b>Tim</b>
</p><p>
  <em> Booop. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Boooop. </em>
</p><p>Tim drums his fingers against the table. “Come <em>on, </em>you frickin’ goth manlet, pick <em>up.”</em></p><p>
  <em> Booooop-- </em>
</p><p>The aforementioned goth manlet picks up. “Yes?”</p><p>Tim perks back upward. “Hey, Doc. How--”</p><p>“Cut the pleasantries, Tim. I can tell you were about to ask how I am, and the answer is ‘terrible.’ You have fifteen minutes until the painkillers wear off and I start groaning for brains.”</p><p>“You…” Tim trails off for a half-second. It can be a touch hard to discern when Doctor is exaggerating to be dramatic, versus exaggerating to be slightly less dramatic. <em> “...Brains?” </em></p><p>“I have to get my protein somehow. Was there something you wanted?”</p><p>After executing a perfect eye-roll that he’s disappointed Doctor can’t actually see, Tim re-adjusts himself to the necessary mental state required to talk to a goth weeaboo-slash-theater-kid. “I just, ah, needed the perspective of someone who <em> doesn’t </em>work at Bigtop Burger. Have you noticed any weird vibes coming off any of us lately?”</p><p>“Weird vibes?” Doctor scoffs. “You understate. Steve is a <em> real clown. </em>Saying he’s got a weird vibe is like saying the Chernobyl Elephant’s Foot is giving you a bit of a sunburn.”</p><p>“I wasn’t talking about <em> Steve, </em>Doc,” says Tim, not bothering to disguise his annoyance. “I was talking about the rest of us. Do you think any of his clown-ness is… I dunno, rubbing off on us humans?”</p><p>“Gross.”</p><p>
  <em> “You know what I mean, asshole.” </em>
</p><p>Doctor does a perfect evil chuckle when he gets that swear out of the other end. He then pauses for a moment, just long enough for Tim to realize he can’t hear Doc breathing.</p><p>“Has the greasepaint gotten harder to wash off lately?” Doc asks. “Have you found yourself lighter on your feet? More inclined to little slights-of-hand when you work the oven?”</p><p>Tim thinks back to the past week or so. He thinks of the time the little purple streaks on his eyelids were so stubborn that he just took a perfect pratfall into bed with them still on. He thinks of the multiple times he was able to make the tricky reach from the oven to the window to check the tip jar. He especially thinks of the time he smacked an almost-empty bottle of ketchup too hard, and somehow applied a perfect smiley face to every open burger within reach.</p><p>“Yes, yes, and... yes,” Tim says. A pit of dread settles in his stomach like an anvil, for he already knows exactly what Doctor is about to tell him.</p><p>“The clown-ness <em>is </em>rubbing off on you. It’s been slowly changing both you and your coworkers since day one. Boiling frog theory, my friend; you didn’t notice how warm the water was getting until it was far too late, and now you’ve all three been turned to soup.”</p><p>“Clown soup,” Tim mutters under his breath.</p><p>A silence hangs on the line for half a beat too long.</p><p>“Also, your fifteen minutes are up. <em> BRAAAAAAAAAAAAINS!” </em></p><p>
  <em> “Okay, thanks, good talk, love you, bye.” </em>
</p><p>Tim hangs up, his half-busted phone inexplicably producing the click of a receiver in a cradle. He takes a breather to try and process that information, then blinks. “Wait, did I just say ‘love you’?”</p><p>
  <b>Steve</b>
</p><p>This has been your plan the whole time, hasn't it?</p><p>No mere mortal can comprehend your intentions, nor can they puzzle out your endgame. They’d be impossible to deduce from just the actions you’ve been taking. World domination is pretty difficult to achieve from a food truck, even for a real clown.</p><p>But regardless of what you’re aiming for, you’ve snagged yourself three human employees. From the looks of it, though, they won’t be human for much longer.</p><p>You <em> would </em>pull some horse piss like this.</p>
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